Tips on effective time management for working travellers

Now that we’ve been home in Australia for a couple of months, we are starting to settle back down into our work-then-play routine.

This finely balanced split was tipped over during the Christmas, New Year and Australia Day period when the whole country takes a few months off to watch cricket, eat snaggers, drink Chardonnay and laze about on the beach.

We’ve been spending a lot of time here…

It was very heaven, but now it’s time to get back to work, something lots of people we have reconnected with can’t believe we find the time do.

How do we manage to fit it all in?

Standing on the outside and looking in, to many people it seems as though Carmen and I are constantly on the move, seeing new places and having new experiences.

While that’s great (and kind of true) we do manage to fit in work around all the fun stuff.

Lately we’ve been having loads of positive chats with people keen to known more about what we do. And many of our friends have been quite shocked to learn that no, we haven’t been on holiday for the past two years.

But when it comes to explaining how we do it, then it gets tricky. We maintain this blog, write books, sew together freelance articles on business topics, run social media campaigns, help with business branding and run around like headless chickens most of the time.

However, that’s all behind the scenes. On the surface we’re as calm as ducks on a lake. (Please tell me this perception is true?)

We’ll be getting stuck in this year

So the inevitable question is…

“How do you find the time?”

How do we get our work done so we can explore the jungle? How can we be online one minute and on a beach the next?

Here’s how…

8 tips for effective time management for travellers:

1. Stop with the blame!

I can never get enough done because I have too many children, too much work, too much cooking, too much cleaning… blah, blah, blah the list goes on.

As soon as we start accepting that we all have 24 hours in the day, just like everyone else, and that we’re all busy, we’ll stop making excuses for ourselves and start to become more productive.

Busy… but still managing to find the time for wine. This was taken in the early days!

2. Remember Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

This is why it’s so important to give yourself deadlines for everything you need to do. If you don’t, it could take you the whole month to do it.

But if you shorten your deadline and decide to complete the same task by the end of the week, you’ll take a quarter of the time to complete the task.

So start setting yourself deadlines (the tighter – within reason – the better) and start getting things done faster. And be specific, as the clearer you are with your deadlines, the more successful you’ll be at meeting them.

3. Tell other people your deadlines

At the moment, Carmen is writing an e-book on digital nomadism. She’s interviewing people to feature in the book, and has been telling everyone that she’s going to have it out by the beginning of April.

All of a sudden, her deadline is very real.

If she hadn’t of told anyone about this due date, perhaps she could’ve keep pushing it back without making herself feel guilty.

But now, people are expecting that book to be out by the beginning of April.

Uh-oh. Suddenly Carmen’s got to whip her butt into gear.

4. Kill the distractions

We once decided that we’d go for a whole week without looking at Facebook. That pact lasted around two hours.

The problem is that we’re often distracted without even noticing we’re getting distracted. We could be writing an in-depth article and getting very much caught up in what we’re doing, when we decide to fact check via Google.

Next thing you know, we’re watching videos on YouTube and a whole hour has disappeared in front of our eyes.

So shut off the internet as you focus on a task, and eliminate any distractions, knuckling down to get the task done.

Mermaids in tanks – very distracting

5. Use the Pomodoro technique

This is almost standard issue for digital nomads – and we first learned about the technique from the amazing blog Making It Anywhere.

It’s simple, it works, and the only thing you need is a clock with an alarm.

Ready?

Choose your task. Set 25 minutes onto the timer, hit start and work with total focus on that task. No Facebook, cups of tea or other trivial distractions. Just work your butt off for 25 minutes and when the alarm goes off, take a 5-minute break.

Congratulations! You’ve just done your first Pomodoro, named by its inventor Francesco Cirillo after the tomato shaped kitchen timer he used for motivation.

For me and Carmen, the Pomodoro Technique is what we turn to when we have to get s%^t done. I have found it works with both creative and technical work – I used Pomodoro technique when I wrote and edited my fiction book, and also when I wrote long business articles for a freelance client.

Our aim is to split our days in half, so mornings are dedicated to blog and freelance work and afternoons are free for cultural and creative pursuits – the perfect work and life balance. And using Pomodoro technique helps us churn through the work we have to do so we can do the things we want to do.

In fact, I wrote this section on a Pomodoro.

TING!

Ok, break time, back in five…

6. We use our power hours

I have never kept normal 9 to 5 working hours. My decade in the media was a mix of either insane early starts, afternoon shifts or overnight graveyard watches.

And news is all about the hourly bulletin, working your butt off from the moment you get in the door to the final second of the broadcast. So when it came time to leave that behind and work on the road, I had no idea how to actually work in a normal fashion, or when I was most productive. My work rate was determined by deadlines and the ever ticking clock.

Take the unforgiving minute away, and I was left with a very interesting question – when should I start my work every day? After all, I was free from an office, commuting and meetings. So, morning or night? 8am or 2pm? What kind of structure could I have?

I figured all of this out through trial and error in the long periods when Carmen and I house sat and could focus our energies on working. I stayed up late in Wisconsin, got up early in Washington, worked through lunch in Colorado and took siestas in Dominica.

Carmen’s desk in Colorado

Then I settled on the morning model of 8am to midday as the time to do my most important, pressing or desirable work. In the afternoon slump I do the boring stuff like admin. Carmen also found she’s the same, so that’s another thing we’re a good match with.

But our designer travel buddy and friend Kristin (she designed our new look website!) is a total night owl, and when we lived together in Oaxaca, Mexico we all did work in our own ways.

Carmen and I would be up with the sun doing yoga and getting stuck into our morning work while Kristin slumbered, and when we went to bed she’d burn the midnight oil.

This yin and yang of working hours kicked up a lot of jokes but in the end all that mattered was that work got done.

Outside the normal boundaries of a typical 9 to 5 working day, we are free to find the hours that suit us, rather than what suit a company. As long as you get the job done, who cares?

7. We design our days

The best part of being a digital nomad is setting your own agenda every day.

At my previous job I had a lot of autonomy, but most things were absolutely non-negotiable. Start time, finish time, when the news bulletins went to air, how long certain things needed to be put in motion – so many things were as finely calibrated as a clock, and the effect was that the shift would suck you in and spit you out no matter what.

But now, I have no structure other than what I design.

It’s very liberating and means I can do what I want, when I like. But certain things are still non-negotiable, like client deadlines and publishing dates for blogs.

So to make sure I get things done, here’s my best-case scenario day design for tackling work on a full length work day when we don’t go sightseeing:

8am – 10am: Creative stuff first. Novel, short story, research, editing, whatever… I strive to start my day with two hours of creative writing. This way I get it done instead of letting other things get in the way.

10am – 12.30pm: Client work.

12.30 – 1.30pm: Lunch and reading.

1.30pm to 4pm: More client work, and when I feel the slump coming on, do admin work.

4pm – 7pm: Creative stuff again, usually blogs for Double-Barrelled Travel or travel writing for another site. Go for a run or a walk.

7pm – 10pm: Dinner and chill, or dinner and write some more. Or go out.

Getting our morning exercise in

Now this day doesn’t happen all the time. It’s the perfect day I strive for and when Carmen and I stay in one place for a while it’s the one that takes over, and when I put enough of them together some good work emerges.

That’s the beauty of working for yourself in your own environment. You make the rules and set the deadlines. And you are free to make your day in whatever way pleases you.

8. Remember, it all comes out in the wash

This is one of my favourite sayings, and to me it means that in the long run everything works out.

As a couple that combines work and travel, we have a lot of things to juggle and sometimes it gets pretty dicey.

I get crunched with freelance work and have to set my creative stuff aside. Or we go out dancing and have to do our work on three hours of sleep. Or a storm knocks out the power and we have to scramble to an internet café with a generator to complete our work.

Ok, now I’ve got time to get out there and smell the roses… or these yellow flowers at least

The real answer to time management

The best answer I can give to the question “how do you find the time?” is that we just do. I don’t think that’s any different from anyone else.

Finding time for business and pleasure is all part of the fun and games of being a digital nomad and I wouldn’t trade it for the world – I want to travel it instead!

Do you have any effective time management tips to add?

3 comments

Great post, guys! I’ve been a freelance writer for almost three years now and I still struggle at times to get into a routine. I’m so easily distracted! I also use the Pomodoro technique. The problem is that I need the internet for at least 70 per cent of the time that I work, so it’s very easy to get caught up in reading something completely irrelevant.